Please don't over-geekify this web site. i have already heard talk about people having more difficulty with entering the web site lately. i, and a number of rural people, continue to use dial-up; we all know what that means. Please keep it somewhat simple.

(As E. E. Cummings writes in his lyrics: "Progress is a comfortable disease...")

Tom P.
Illinois_______ (excerpt from E. E. Cummings: "How many winds make wonderful... and is luck The skeleton of life")

Knoted4ever wrote:Please don't over-geekify this web site. i have already heard talk about people having more difficulty with entering the web site lately. i, and a number of rural people, continue to use dial-up; we all know what that means. Please keep it somewhat simple.

(As E. E. Cummings writes in his lyrics: "Progress is a comfortable disease...")

Please be more specific. If there is a change that can be made that would help, I would be open to trying to accommodate. What exactly are the difficulties you refer to?

But please, also remember that the new section is an addition to go beyond what the forum offers on its own. It is not intended to take anything away from what we already have, just to add some things that aren't easy to do within the structure of a bulletin board. The discussion forum is not going anywhere, and is not going to change in any fundamental way. We're all still going to be gabbing away here on the board.

When you refer to "entering the web site" what do you mean? Do you mean the top level home page, or any other page specifically? Do you usually start at that page? That's not how I navigate, so I may not see what you are seeing. I have the forum index and new posts pages bookmarked, so I tend to go directly to those pages instead of going through the top page to get where I'm headed.

I certainly sympathize with those that are on dial-up. I wasn't an early adopter of broadband myself, and I can recall what that was like. On one hand, I'd like to minimize any difficulty that comes as a result of that, but on the other hand, there are a lot of neat things that technology makes possible that can enhance the experience for the approximately 96% of visitors to the site that are not using dial-up.

If there's anything that can be done to help you get to the things you want to see more efficiently, we'll make an effort to do that.

If people are having difficulties, the only way to take care of them is for someone to actually tell us about them. There are always ways to fix them or offer alternatives that help people avoid internet technologies that tax their connection speed. BUT, unless we are told, there is less than little that we can do about it.

As an example, there is no question that any graphics intensive site (which these forums are) will cause loading issues with people on Dialup. But, did you know that there is a 'lo-fi- version of the board available that will give you the board without all the graphics? (see the bottom of the page) Is it as visually pleasing? Nope. But, it does make loading the site much quicker for those who are connectively challenged. Or, as Jeff mentioned, you can directly link to specific areas of the board that will make your visit quicker. Personally, I link directly to the the page that clicking the 'New' button at the top of the forums takes you to. This way I avoid loading the home page and make checking into the board much quicker for myself.

We do understand that not all people want to use or are able to use all that the internet can provide. We are always evaluating and trying to balance the technology that we do use against that which is available. At some point, we have to make decisions on what services we can provide vs. those services that people actually will use or as in your case, what they can use.

BUT, just because we provide it does not mean that you must use it or that it will replace the basic functionality that we already have. For example, just because we have added an additional way for people to get at festival information does not mean that the festival information we have on the board will go away. On the contrary, we will provide this information in both places to cover the exact situation that you describe.

But I will stress this simple fact once again.... Unless we are told of problems, we cannot fix them!

Well, i heard another forum member complaining about recent difficulty with getting on-board with the site. That prompted me to write something; but it is no serious problem... so please don't let your feathers get ruffled by it! i have had difficulty, at times, with posting things, for example. Sometimes when i would hit the submit button... the whole thing would be lost; that can be pretty frustrating when one has written a lot. Also sometimes when i hit the "New" line or tab... it come up with 0 entries... which is not the real case. i've cleaned up stuff on my computer to help; i really need to get a new box and faster service!

i am just asking to keep the basic thing: somewhat simple. It's great the way it is! For one thing... i'm glad that we don't have a lot of dumb pop-ups and advertisements like a lot of sites have!... that is very nice! i realize that you guys work very hard to have such a superb site... and it is much appreciated!!!

Tom P.

Illinois_______ (excerpt from E. E. Cummings: "How many winds make wonderful... and is luck The skeleton of life")

Knoted4ever wrote:Well, i heard another forum member complaining about recent difficulty with getting on-board with the site. That prompted me to write something; but it is no serious problem... so please don't let your feathers get ruffled by it! i have had difficulty, at times, with posting things, for example. Sometimes when i would hit the submit button... the whole thing would be lost; that can be pretty frustrating when one has written a lot. Also sometimes when i hit the "New" line or tab... it come up with 0 entries... which is not the real case. i've cleaned up stuff on my computer to help; i really need to get a new box and faster service!

i am just asking to keep the basic thing: somewhat simple. It's great the way it is! For one thing... i'm glad that we don't have a lot of dumb pop-ups and advertisements like a lot of sites have!... that is very nice! i realize that you guys work very hard to have such a superb site... and it is much appreciated!!!

It's ok to bring issues to our attention, Tom. If there's something that can be fixed, it will be fixed.

Some problems can be specific to the bandwidth of the end user, and dial-up is difficult sometimes since most sites these days presume that most visitors have fast connections. But there are also server or network problems that come up from time to time that affect everybody. I do know that recently there was a period of time where I was having some trouble connecting also...where the site was not responding quickly, and sometimes timing out the connection. It doesn't happen too often, but when it does it is frustrating. Usually that is something that the hosting service has to deal with, and it's not directly related to the actual content of the website.

But if there is something that is affecting your ability to use the site, feel free to alert us. We'll look into it.

1st and foremost, unless someone says something to us, nothing can be done. It doesn't hurt our feeling when someone says they have a problem. What hurts our feelings is when someone has a problem and they say nothing and they just go away. And then we hear about it later....